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I find strange that line of thinking. That NASA and other space agencies use highly trained personnel like military pilots for space missions seems largely a hi
by publicola1990 5y ago
I find strange that line of thinking. That NASA and other space agencies use highly trained personnel like military pilots for space missions seems largely a historical accident.
In "The Right Stuff", there is discussion on this topic, initially trapeeze artists were thought to be the ideal personnel for the space program due to the high dynamic forces they routinely experience. Another opinion being considered was to use death row prisoners. Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view.
- nautilius 5y agoExactly. Literal monkeys and dogs did the job, before Gagarin or Shepard.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago>"Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view." I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test pilots make sense for several reasons: they already understand aeronautical concepts, are used to g-forces, have experience with state of the art machines, have a high risk tolerance, and are already familiar with following orders.
- throwaway894345 5y ago> are already familiar with following orders. Probably more than this, following protocols but having an ability to think for themselves on their feet (as opposed to a grunt following minutia orders).
- mumblemumble 5y agoI'm sure it was over-dramatized in the film (which I haven't seen, I'm just assuming they prioritized compelling storytelling based on the fact that it wasn't a public television documentary), but supposedly something like that decisionmaking process actually happened. For example, see Wikipedia's synopsis of the book, which was presumably at least somewhat more factual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book): The storyline also involves the political reasons for putting people into space, asserting that the Mercury astronauts were actually a burden to the program and were only sent up for promotional reasons. Reasons for including living beings in spacecraft are barely touched upon, but the first option considered was to use a chimpanzee (and, indeed, chimpanzees were sent up first). Another option considered was using athletes already accustomed to physical stress, such as circus trapeze artists. Wolfe states that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, insisted on pilots, even though the first crew members would not actually fly the spacecraft.
- Faaak 5y agoIf you're interested about that, the "The Calculating Stars" book talks a bit about it. It's really nice to read !
- aardvarkr 5y agoDo you really think the pilots are nothing more than dead weight whose only purpose is to be a passenger? The astronauts were some of the best of the best because it was an experimental flight program. Do you really think the best pilots would sign up and give their lives just to be a test subject with no control like the chimpanzee the Russians put into space?
- vmception 5y agoThe point is that they don’t have to, the level of discipline is unnecessary, viable commercial space travel means it is supposed to become even more unnecessary So the gatekeeping can go away
- rrss 5y agoBasically yes, that’s what they signed up for in project mercury. The initial plan had nothing for the human to pilot. Mercury only got manual controls and a window because the astronauts fought for them.